Monday, December 6, 2010

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas...

... in our home!

In case I hadn't made it clear before now, I LOVE CHRISTMAS. Our house is slowly but surely getting decorated for the holiday season. As of an hour ago, I finished my last assignment for the semester, so now I will have more time! Unless Bill and I continue to get distracted by the Firefly DVDs... yep, it's SciFi (for Bill) and Nathan Fillion (for me). It's addicting, as you may be able to tell from the 5 hours we've watched in the past 2 days. Anyways. I wanted to give you all a little rundown of how we've Christmas-fied our home recently.

First up, we have the dining room:

Perhaps it's a little more "Winter" than "Christmas," but it's seasonal nonetheless. And I cannot begin to count the number of times I have been thankful that Bill let me choose the color scheme for the room. (Okay, for almost the whole house, but especially this room!)

A little close-up of the table. Aren't the salt and pepper shakers cute? My mom and I each scored a set at a Ben Franklin for $2! The reindeer is actually a tealight candle holder.

I cannot get over these picks. They are huge and glittery and shimmery and wonderful! They're from ZGallerie, and I will warn you - they were a little messy to unpack. (The crystals and glitter got everywhere!) But it was totally worth it. I think they might be my new favorite decoration in the house.

I don't have holiday napkin holders, so I made my own! The ribbon has ornaments on it, and the little silver ornaments match the hurricane in the middle of the table - it's filled with large silver ornaments!

Moving on, to the living room:

I came home one day, and Bill had decorated in his own way! Lights inside the house... LOVE it!

More lights on the banister :)

Our homemade Advent calendar... It's not sitting on the floor anymore, but it is in the living room! Above it, you can kind of see our gingerbread house frame, Christmas tree collection, and our Jim Shore musical Santa. Why oh why didn't I take pictures of these?

The main event: the Christmas tree! Every year I can remember, my grandfather and uncle would go up to the mountains one day and get trees for the whole family. I never knew when it was going to be, but I would come home from school one day and there our tree would be, leaning against the house! It was always so exciting! I know some people like to pick out their trees, but this is just the way my family always did it. Now that Bill and I are in our own house, we get our own tree! So Friday, my mom, aunt, uncle and grandpa went to get the trees and then drove around dropping them off for everyone. Needless to say, Friday night was spent decorating by Bill and I! (The tree is actually in our basement, in a dog-free zone, so we had to move some still-as-of-now-unpacked boxes!)

Hubby hard at work, trimming the bottom branches so we can put it up!

It was my turn to put the star on top!

Batman hangs at the top of the tree, keeping watch over Gotham... Er, wait, our basement.

I know I showed off Sensei's ornament last year, but I bought a matching one for Preston this year!

My new favorite ornament... I actually dropped it when decorating the tree, and it broke, but Bill was kind enough to put it back together - you can't even tell!

Our tree, all lit up!

Our stockings... Preston's, Bill's, mine, and Sensei's. They have little name tags to help us remember :) Our garland is just more oversized silver ornaments (you can see the rest in the dining room!) and branches from our tree.

And finally, outside. We haven't finished putting all the lights out front, so there are no pictures of that yet... Surprisingly, though, our little town got SNOW on Saturday (So early!) which really made our house look Christmas-ready!

Our lovely home in the first snow of the season!

We decided to skip the traditional wreath, and instead, I got a personalized door ornament!

Backyard

Mini shoot in the snow with the pups!

I'm sure you can all imagine how much I love this photo! They never sit still together like this!

So there you have it. The Fischers are now in a holiday-friendly home. The Fischers are also very tired after the weekend we had... The dogs now have a sandbox in the backyard, so maybe they'll stop digging huge holes that I fall in! Bill and I have some houseguests coming in less than two weeks, so we also finally tackled the guest room Saturday. The painting phase is over, so here's hoping that the furniture-moving and decorating phases will be done by December 16! I'll have a post on that once the whole room is finished... But here's a little teaser of what's to come.

The before:

Stay tuned for the transformation!

Thanks for sticking with me to the end of this post, faithful readers. And Happy Holidays!

the blogger

welcome!

I'm 23, obsessed with my dogs and, after 5 years together, I finally married my best friend! I never leave the house without a camera or my chapstick, I met Aaron Carter at Wal-Mart in the sixth grade, and I could probably speak entirely in Bon Jovi lyrics. Within the span of a month, I moved into my first home, started grad school and got married. Life is a little scary, and a lot crazy, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

How did I get the name?

The name for the blog was inspired by Bon Jovi (of course), and their song "Welcome to Wherever You Are."

Welcome to wherever you are This is your life, you made it this far Welcome, you gotta believe That right here right now,You're exactly where you're supposed to be